Story of the Pact Primeval

In the beginning—and even before—chaos was all that existed. Out
of it came demons—the living manifestations of chaos. Time had
not yet been invented, so the demons fought each other continuously
in a vortex of disorder over an immeasurable period.
    A state of raw chaos was intolerable to the universe, so a force
arose to combat it—the power of law. From this pr inciple of abs tract
order, a number of beings coalesced to combat the demons.
     These new deities of law suited themselves in gleaming armor
made of pure stability and took up weapons forged of ideal
thought. Then they waded into battle against the demons. After
the battle had raged for uncounted eons, the law deities felt the
need to track their progress. They created numbers, to record
the enemies slain, and time, so they could see how long victory
would take.
    Gradually, however, the deities of law began to suspect that the
sup ply of demons was infi  nite. Wear y of bat tle, they wished to move
on to other projects, such as the creation of worlds and intelligent
beings. So they made beautiful winged war riors to ser ve them and
wield their divine magic, both in the endless war against the demons
and in the worlds yet to be created. These beings, glorious in their
diversity, were called angels.
    The bravest, toughest, fiercest, and most beautiful of the
angels was Asmodeus. He slew more demons than any other
of his kind—more even than any deity. But as the eons wore
on, Asmodeus and the members of his magnificent and terrible
company began to take on some of their enemies’ traits, so as to
fight them more effectively. Gradually, their beauty turned to
ugliness, and the deities and other angels began to fear them.
Eventually, the inhabitants of the celestial realms petitioned
the great gods to banish Asmodeus and the most fearsome of his
aveng ing angels. So A smodeus was put on tr ial before Heironeous,
the god of valor.
     The darkest of the angels responded readily to the charges, reading
from the great tablets of law that he had helped to carve. “The fi rst
duty of law is to destroy chaos,” he argued. “I have performed this
duty better than any.”
     “You have made war, and made it well,” Heironeous agreed. “Yet
you and your company have poisoned yourselves in the process. Can
you not go elsewhere, lest we become contaminated too?”
    Asmodeus smiled, and the smoke of a thousand battlefields
rose from his lips. “As Lord of Battle,” he pointed out, “you should
know better than any that war is a dirty business. We have
blackened ourselves so that you can remain golden. We have
upheld the laws, not broken them. Therefore, you may not cast
us out.”
    The gods huddled together to discuss what they had heard.
Great was their consternation when they could fi nd no counters
in their tablets of law to Asmodeus’s arguments. The dark angel
knew the laws better than they did and could wield their clauses
like a knife.
     With the passage of time, Asmodeus and his warband grew ever
more alarming in aspect. Fangs jutted from their mouths, their
tongues grew forked, and they wreathed their bodies in mantles of
fi re. The deities built new citadels to escape them, but Asmodeus
and his followers penetrated these as well. They sued the gods under
their own laws, demanding full access to all the privileges accorded
champions of order. The deities were distressed but could fi nd no
lawful way to stop them.
    So the gods retreated to their great project—the creation of
mortals, and of verdant worlds for those favored beings to live
on. But when demons invaded these worlds, the warbands of
Asmodeus were called upon to stop them. Although the voracious
hos ts of the tanar ’r i were no easier to vanquish on the new worlds
of the Material Plane than they had been on the battlegrounds
of the Outer Planes, Asmodeus and his dark angels generally
succeeded in driving them back. Together, the gods and angels
created barriers on the Material Plane to keep the demons at
bay. They erected walls, threw up ranges of mountains, covered
portions of their worlds with icy wastes, and buried the entrances
the demons had used under vast oceans. Thus were the newly
created worlds, like Asmodeus and his lot, scarred and made ugly
for the greater benefi t of law.
     Then the deities of order made a horrifying discovery. The mortals
they had created—their pride and joy—immediately set to work
tearing down these barriers. They scaled walls, climbed mountains,
and traversed glaciers to let the demons back in. Upon returning
to the Material Plane, the demons ran riot, destroying one earthly
paradise after another.
    The deities were angry but also confused. “Why did my sweet
halfl ings do this to me?” cried Yondalla, who had created them.
    “I invented mountains and set my clever dwarves as their pro-
tectors!” thundered Moradin. “Why did they tunnel under them
and into the demon crypts?”
    The gods wailed and lamented until Asmodeus came to them
with the answer. “Your mortals are taking these actions because
you gave them minds of their own.”
     “Of course we did!” said the deities. “Without free will, the choice
to follow the law means nothing.”
     “Indeed,” replied Asmodeus, crushing a small insect that had
crawled out of his neatly trimmed red beard. “They are curious
creatures, these mortals, and the demons have promised them
freedom. Soon they will learn that the liberty dangled before them
is that of absolute anarchy, and that in a demon realm, they are f ree
only to be destroyed. But by then, it will be too late for them. You
might create more worlds and more mortals to people them, but I
promise you, the same folly will recur eternally.”
INTRODUCTION
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INTRODUCTION
     When the gods realized the truth of the dark angel’s words, they
were downcast. They rent their garments and wailed in despair.
    “I have the solution that eludes you,” said Asmodeus, “one that
will allow your precious mortals to retain the free will you have so
benefi cently given them. The problem is this,” he continued. “Your
law is one of voluntary obedience. You command the mortals to
abjure chaos, but what happens when they disobey you?”
    The deities had no answer. “We are their creators,” moaned
Yondalla. “Of course they should heed us.”
    “Indeed they should,” replied Asmodeus, bowing gallantly to
the fair Yondalla. “But they do not, because there can be no law
without Punishment.”
     “Punishment?” muttered the host of deities and godlings. “What
is this Punishment of which you speak?”
    Asmodeus pulled it from its sheath. At this time, Punishment
was shaped like a mighty sword, though it has taken on many
forms since then. “I have invented this item for you as the ultimate
weapon of law. When laws are broken, the wrongdoers must be
made to suffer as a warning to others. Thus, mortals can choose
between the paradise of rightful action and the torment of wicked-
ness. A few will suffer Punishment so that the majority can see the
consequences of lawbreaking.”
    The gods were disquieted by this pronouncement, but as usual,
they could fi  nd no fl  aws in their champion’s logic. How could mortals
be expected to choose virtue if evil went unpunished?
     At last, one of the godlings stepped forward and said, “Yes, retribu-
tion is the basis of all law.” These words transformed him on the
spot into the greater deity now known as St. Cuthbert.
     On that day, the deities began to see that law and chaos were not
the only principles in the universe. Good and evil were natural forces
in the cosmos as well. So the gods separated themselves from one
other on that basis. Deities such as Hecate and Set offered patronage
to Asmodeus’s poisoned angels, while Heironeous and some of the
others drew back from them still more.
     So the deities handed down their new laws and sent their clerics
through mortal lands to announce that the punishment for sin
would be torment. The gods were pleased with the arrangement.
They truly thought that everyone would obey and that no one would
actually be punished.
    But as mortals died, some souls trickled into the celestial planes
who bore the stink of transgression. Asmodeus, aided by Dispater,
Mephistopheles, and others of his dark brigade, set about their
lawful punishment. They fl ayed these sinners, and burned them,
and placed them on racks.
     The shrieks of the damned reverberated throughout the heavens,
and the fl  owers in the gods’ idyllic gardens dripped with blood. The
deities of law tried to shut their ears, but they could not abide the
horror. So they put Asmodeus in chains and again charged him
with high crimes against them.
     “I have merely done what I said I would, under the laws you
drafted,” said Asmodeus. Again, the gods had to admit he was
right.
    “But I have a proposal for you,” the grim champion continued.
“You wish to see the law upheld, but you do not care to witness its
ranker consequences. So to preserve your delicate sensibilities, my
followers and I will take our project elsewhere. We will build a
perfect Hell for you. You will gain from its existence but need never
lay eyes upon it. We shall put it . . . there.” And he pointed to an
empty land, which is now called Baator.
    “Yes, yes!” said all the deities. “You must move your Hell there,
forthwith!”
    “Nothing would please me more,” said Asmodeus. He extended
his hand, and a ruby rod of power appeared in it. “But fi  rst, we must
make a pact.”
    “A pact?” asked Moradin suspiciously.
     “Yes, indeed,” said Asmodeus, producing a document with a wave
of his hand. “It is to your benefi t to ensure that we, who labor for
you in a place you will not venture, continue to carry out your will.
This agreement specifi es the fate of damned souls. In exchange, it
allows us to draw magic from these souls, so we can fuel our spells
and maintain our powers.”
    “I’m not sure I like the sound of that,” said the fl inty Moradin.
     “Your concerns are entirely understandable, O Maker of Dwarves,”
said Asmodeus in his most reassuring tone. “But since we will be
separated f rom you, we will not be able to draw our powers f rom you,
as we always have. You would not wish to make us gods independent
of yourselves, would you?”
    “Assuredly not!” huffed Moradin, appalled at the thought.
     “So ins tead, take this lesser measure, and simply sig n this pact,”
he said with a smile. Thus, the law deities signed the agreement
that determined the boundaries of Hell and the rules for the
transmission of wick ed souls. Today, mor tals know this document
as the Pact Primeval.
     Once it was signed, Asmodeus, Mephistopheles, and Dispater
decamped to Baator, which was then a bleak and featureless
plain. With them went a host of other dark angels that called
themselves erinyes.
    “What have you gotten us into?” Mephistopheles moaned.
    “This place has nothing!” Dispater complained.
    “Just wait,” said Asmodeus. Then he explained his plan.
     The deities of virtuous law reveled in their newly purifi  ed celestial
domains, now free of the cruel angels’ degradation for the fi  rst time.
It was not for many years, in mor tal ter ms, that they discovered an
alarming drop in the number of souls being transmitted to their
various heavens. Upon conferring with their clergy, they realized
that devils were corrupting mortals and ensuring their damnation
by turning them toward evil.
    The deities formed a delegation, which set off immediately for
Baator. To their surprise, the once-featureless plain had been trans-
formed into nine tiers of monstrous horror and torment. Within
its confi nes, they found countless souls writhing in pain. They saw
these souls transformed, fi  rst into crawling, mindless monsters, and
eventually into an army of powerful devils.
    “What goes on here?” Heironeous demanded.
     “You have granted us the power to harvest souls,” replied Asmo-
deus. “To build our Hell and gird our might for the task set before
us, we naturally had to fi nd ways to improve our yield.”
     The war deity drew forth his longsword of crackling lightning.
“It is your job to punish transgressions, not to encourage them!”
he cried.
     Asmodeus smiled, and a venomous moth fl  ew out from between
his sharpened teeth. “Read the fi ne print,” he replied.